Comments on: Contributoring writers desperately needed

By: AJ

AJ — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:33:30 +0000

I would contribute to be a writer if required, get in touch with me via the email supplied with this post.

Check out my website to see some of the other items ive posted, and if you guys like it, i’d be grateful to help out.

By: Paldin

Paldin — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:45:45 +0000

Sounds like I have something to do now. I’ve always been a min/max-er and now I have an outlet for my nerditude. Expect great things from me. You heard it first here.

By: T2A`

T2A` — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:10:51 +0000

“I think SupCom should only appeal to the somewhat hardcore gamer who will probably already have a good PC.” … If you think that than you cannot really complain about the small size of the community. I’m not saying SupCom should have six million players like WoW, but the player base is still very limited no matter how you look at it. And even then, as small as the player base is, at least half of it doesn’t go online, and probably 30% or more of the half that does is really, really bad at it. That’s not very much potential for good games at all.

All I’m saying is a game needs to be accessible to do well on a large scale. On all fronts, SupCom is not accessible in any manner. Even if you’ve got a really nice computer and have played RTS games before, there’s still a huge learning curve due to the game being so different from others. That’s one of the reasons UT2004 failed to impress the masses long term — there’s just too much to learn compared to your average “hop in the server and start shooting stuff” FPS. But I wrote all about that before.

By: Baddox

Baddox — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:32:45 +0000

I’ve had a decent to high-end pc (for its time) since I was 16, which now that I think about it, was before I had a job, so I must have just saved up gift money and such. I think SupCom should only appeal to the somewhat hardcore gamer who will probably already have a good PC. I don’t see any problem with SupCom not having as huge of a community as, say, World of Warcraft, which everyone knows is the Mother Whore of PC games. McDonald’s sells billions of burgers, but any chef would scoff at the idea of using sales to gauge the quality of food.

By: Sear

Sear — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:35:23 +0000

That is true in, I’m 17 and have a top notch pc that runs supreme commander on full with a good fps, but I happen to have spent all my money on it, then it blew up 6 months later, the refund given me the money to have the pc I have (I love the fact that I got 180 pound for a card that is worth 100 now, giving me the money to get an 8800) but I don’t know anyone personally under 18 that has a high end pc, they all have lame family computers/laptops. Oh sorry about my big brag there but I had too :P

By: Widjet

Widjet — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 02:11:24 +0000

@Baddox - For a game to have truly mass appeal, such as WoW, CS or Starcraft, it needs to be able to run well on the sort of stock computer that a family typically buys. That’s not the case for Supreme Commander at the moment. Sure, I’ve built my own computer that runs Supreme Commander alright (but not well), for about AU$1000, but for the vast majority of under-18s, that’s not an option, so they have to use their family’s computer.

By: zordon

zordon — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:05:29 +0000

Hah, cydeweys, what you do for a living?

By: Baddox

Baddox — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:32:35 +0000

If only everyone knew how to build their own computer. For between 4 and 500 USD you can easily get a computer that could handle SupCom, obviously not including a monitor. I almost don’t think hardware requirements are a very legitimate excuse for SupCom’s dwindling numbers (by the way, I haven’t actually seen any statistics, and I find the community to be large enough for my interests), especially with the patch or patches that made stuff run better.

By: T2A`

T2A` — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:44:43 +0000

CS 1.6 has been played for a long, long time. It’s not because of marketing or anything Valve did aside from making the game. CS is played because people find it fun and it doesn’t require anything but a $300 computer to run. There’s little GPG can do to make their games become truly accepted in the community; that happens when players tell other players about it and the community keeps growing. SupCom’s is shrinking and has been doing so since February. I suppose FA will cause a resurgence for awhile, but ultimately SupCom will remain a niche game, especially with SC2 coming some time in the future. Five years from now I suspect SupCom2 will be out and enjoyed by that niche of players while most everyone who plays RTS will be playing SC2 or the Warcraft IV.

Besides, those points of mine were potential articles, not reasons that people don’t play. People who don’t play do so because it’s not fun (in the majority sense) and the computer requirements are too steep. One (or both) of those is always why games aren’t played. Look at Q4. id pimped the hell out of it and its launch was highly anticipated, but no one plays the game because it’s not fun. Now, getting commercials on TV and having the game at big-name LANs does help, in theory, but even that didn’t help Q4. Q3? Fun and easy on the computer, so people play it. UT2004? Not fun, so people don’t play it. UT? Fun and easy on the computer, so people play it. It’s common sense.

By: Genna

Genna — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:36:41 +0000

I would love to write for you, I’m a student studying for my masters in English with creative writing and I love Supreme Commander, the perfect combination to write on this site… almost. The only fly in the ointment being that I’m not a competitive player, I don’t know a lot about ranked stratagems or the like. I’m afraid to say I’m one of those players that ranked people seem to despise, you know, the kind that like to play custom games with their friends instead of worrying that I’ve lost a game because I built an air factory too early. What do you think Cyde Weys? Do I have a shot?